


Funnel Cake

by Arsenic



Series: Discipline and Punish [49]
Category: Bandom, My Chemical Romance
Genre: Alternate Universe - Prison, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-30
Updated: 2007-11-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 23:12:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19029895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arsenic/pseuds/Arsenic
Summary: Gerard has a surprise for Mikey.





	Funnel Cake

Tommy had his face buried in Mizzy's fur when he asked, "When did you-- I mean, how did you figure it out? About Frank? Because it was girls before that, right?"

Mikey understood. He thought about pretending he hadn't, was pretty sure that if he made Tommy ask again that Tommy would lose his nerve and Mikey wouldn't have to have this conversation. But Mikey tried, for the most part, not be a coward. Especially not for the people who needed him to be anything but. Mikey sat down on the floor and reached out to scratch behind Mizzy's ears. "There was this day. He was sad, I mean really kinda fucked up over some shit that had gone down, and I wanted to make him feel better. And I was trying to think how to, figure out a way, and I just realized, somewhere in there, that I wanted him to feel better with a depth that I usually only reserved for, y'know, Gee. And I can be stupid about myself or about people, but I knew that had to mean _something_."

"Did you? Did you make him feel better?"

Mikey tamped down on about thirteen deeply inappropriate responses to that question. "Yeah. I did."

"Yeah. You'd be good at being someone's boyfriend," Tommy said this solemnly.

Mikey couldn't help it, he laughed a little. "Can I ask, is this about someone in particular?" He had a hunch, but he just wanted to make sure Tommy wasn't head over heels in love with Jon, which was both plausible and plausibly tragic, since Jon and Matt had sort of caught onto each other like fire and dry kindling.

"This is just between you and me, right?"

Mikey frowned at that. "'Course."

"You know how Alex from the kitchen keeps coming over here?"

Mikey nodded, biting back a relieved sigh.

"It's just-- When he's teaching me how to cook things he doesn't act like I'm a complete fuck up if I make a mistake, and he listens, like, one time I told him I really like mashed potatoes, like they're one of my favorite things in the world and after that he kept finding recipes for different kinds to try and make and see if I liked them. And he got me a framed copy of the picture Jon got printed, and it's like-- I don't know, it's like I'm special for him."

Mikey nodded. "Is he special for you?"

Tommy opened his mouth, then closed it, considering the question. "I-- I _think_ so. I really like it when he comes over, and I find myself thinking in pictures almost every time he's around, like, how I want to take them, and keep them, just in case, I mean, it's just, people go away, so I'd want--" Tommy shook his head. "But also, when he laughs, it's like I can't help laughing, even if I'm not really happy, and he's so sure that he can do things right in the kitchen, like, even when things go totally wrong he just picks up and moves on and that's really, I mean, it makes me believe in him and I don't really believe in a lot, you know?"

Mikey did know. "Do you want to...put a finger to his lips? Press yourself to him? See how good it could be and you're pretty sure, even if you don't really know, somehow you do, that it will be fun, that you'll want to do it again and again and again?"

Tommy tilted his head. "I know that I want to see if his fingers taste as good as they seem like they should. And maybe if this tongue piercing does me any good."

Mikey knew he shouldn't, but he asked, "Why'd you keep it?" Mikey knew exactly why it had taken him so fucking long to cut his hair, but that was different. Frank and him were different. And Tommy hadn't kept the ear piercings, had taken them out the day he'd been released, but the tongue stud had stayed in. He didn't have a lisp with it, so it wasn't noticeable in the least, and the only way Mikey even knew was that he'd caught Tommy playing with it once or twice.

Tommy shrugged. "'Cause I'm stupid."

"Tommy," Mikey warned. Tommy knew the house rules. He wasn't allowed to use the words "stupid," "worthless," or any of their synonyms in relation to himself or he had to wash dishes for a week.

"Sorry," Tommy said, and he sounded so validly defeated that Mikey decided it could just be their little secret.

"Why would you say that?"

"He's not even, I mean, I don't even know if he thinks of me as a friend, but nobody else has ever much bothered with me, not the way he did, and then he sent me to you when I didn't have anywhere else and it was just the only thing I had that other people couldn't see. The only thing I had to keep."

"Oh," Mikey breathed.

"Told you," Tommy muttered.

"He thinks of you as a little brother," Mikey said, and it was an argument, of sorts.

Tommy's gaze snapped up to Mikey's. "Like-- Like you are for Gee?"

Knowing it was nothing like that, but also knowing that relationships were fluid and largely shaped by the beliefs of the people within them, Mikey nodded. "Yeah, something like that."

"Oh," Tommy said, and his smile was more real even than the day he'd signed the contract to produce CD liner art.

 

*

_Frank,_

_Listen, if Tommy says anything, I told him you thought of him as a little brother. I'm pretty sure I was telling the truth, but if I wasn't, do me a favor and lie. He's doing really well, and I'm thinking if I can get Alex to ask him on a date sometime soon he'll actually say yes and backpedaling is pretty much the last thing anyone needs right now, you know?_

_I started at the hospital last week. It's pretty crazy. Luckily, they don't let me do anything without a mentor, because these are children and if I break them, I can't just glue them back together. But they seem to like me, and I definitely like them, so so far so good._

_Gee has a surprise for me next weekend. He won't tell me what, but he made me tell Brian that I was taking the whole weekend off and also ask to borrow Brian's truck, because Brian won't let Gee or Bob borrow it on their own ever since they had sex in the back. I don't know why we couldn't just borrow Jon's or Greta's--Matt and Vicky would both take them wherever they needed to get and Spencer and Ryan are still sharing a car, even though Spence has all but moved in with Brian and Brendon is kind of slowly taking over Spencer's space at the apartment, but Gee was like, "Truck. Truck truck truck." And whatever, sometimes it's just easier to let him have his way. Bob totally agrees with me on this point._

_155 days._

_Mikeyway_

 

*

Gerard pulled Mikey out of bed at around eight Saturday morning and threw a pair of jeans and a t-shirt at him. "C'mon," he said, and bounced out of the room. Gerard always scared Mikey when he suddenly became a morning person. It was unnatural and likely unhealthy. All the same, Mikey went and splashed his face, brushed his teeth, did his best to get his hair to behave. It was getting too long, he'd have to ask Phyllis to cut it for him. She would do it in trade for him helping her make the marinara, which mostly just meant standing around and stirring a lot.

When he came out of the bathroom, Gerard had toasted them both Lender's bagels, and smeared Mikey's with cream cheese topped in blackberry jelly, which was his favorite. Mikey said, "Thanks," and plowed right in. No sooner had he finished than Gerard said, "'Kay, time to go." He picked up an overnight bag and headed out the door.

Mikey said, "You said bye to Bob, right?"

Gerard smiled and said, somewhat hazily, "Mmhm."

Mikey didn't need to know the details. He left a message for Tommy saying, "We'll be back by tomorrow evening, make sure Mizzy gets fed and walked, and tell her not to give you any lip." Then he followed Gerard out the door, into the wild blue yonder.

 

*

As Readington grew nearer and nearer, Mikey knew _exactly_ where they were going. "Holy fuck. _Gee_!!" And no, it wasn't dignified, but Mikey was totally dancing in the confines of his seatbelt, and he was man enough to admit it.

Gerard laughed, "I know!"

Every year in July, Readington held New Jersey's Annual Ballooning Festival. When they were kids, Gerard and Mikey would watch the local news cover it every year and beg Elena to take them. Elena, though, hadn't owned a car, and even if she had, Readington was quite a ways out from where they'd lived, and not an easy trip for one older woman with two fairly rambunctious boys. Plus, once there, there were entrance fees and parking fees and it really just wasn't feasible. They'd had to settle for watching the news reports, year after year. Mikey thought that maybe this was something he should have grown out of wanting to see, but it was all that he could do to stay in his seat for the last thirty miles of the trip. It only made him feel slightly better that Gerard wasn't acting all that differently beside him.

Once they had parked and paid, they ran around for a little while, going to see all the special balloons that they'd watched for so long. Mikey's favorite was the beagle; Gerard's was the bees. At some point they got hungry enough for lunch, and they ate. Then Gerard decided--and he was clearly, clearly right about this--that a visit to the festival without eating its signature dish was actually no visit at all. The funnel cake was shaped like a hot air balloon, and served with chocolate sauce, blueberries, strawberries and powdered sugar. It was possibly the most awesome thing in Mikey's experience of awesome, except for Frank's lemon bars, which were the natural exception to every rule about awesomeness ever.

Gerard said, "'Nother one after dinner?" Mikey wasn't sure it was wise to wait that long, but he guessed he could give Gerard time to catch up. Wimp.

They went and danced on the side of the stage where some band that Mikey had never heard of was playing. It was sixties folk, the kind of the thing that Elena had been just a bit too old to be into and Mikey and Gerard a bit too young, but Mikey liked music in general, and while his preferences definitely ran toward punk and rock and whatever sounded sort of like those things, he wasn't all that picky so long as people knew how to play their instruments. Gerard was a total dork when he danced, even more than normal, and Mikey knew he probably looked just like him and the thought alone made Mikey grin like a madman.

At six-thirty, over 100 hot air balloons launched into the sky and Mikey had seen it captured on a TV screen a million times, but it just wasn't the same, not at all. It was overdramatic and overwhelming and completely awesome in a nearly biblical sense. The sky was nothing but colors and shapes and Mikey wondered what it looked like to Gerard, who saw art in everything, could make the most mundane things beautiful. He had called Mikey beautiful once when they were kids, and nobody had yet noticed except maybe Elena. It had been odd and Mikey had thought maybe Gerard was making fun of him, but then Gerard had drawn what he'd seen and Mikey had realized that beauty was not something Gerard ever thought of as humorous. He said, "Gee, Gee. What do you see?"

Gerard's eyes were on the sky, on the plethora of balloons floating almost just in each other's space and he said, "Us. I see us."

 

*

Evidently, by the time Gerard had come up with his grand plan to give them their childhood dream, every motel within reasonable distance had been blocked solid. So when it got dark, Mikey and Gerard climbed into the bed of the truck and laid on their backs, watching the lit balloons float slowly through the night sky. As the last of them descended, Mikey yawned. Gerard went into the truck and got out the bedrolls he'd evidently tucked behind the seats. Mikey didn't know to whom they belonged until he caught sight of the tags, each neatly labeled "Ryan" and "Spencer" in ten year-old handwriting. Gerard handed one to Mikey. They unrolled and lay atop them, the July air too warm and still to climb inside.

Gerard said, "Surprise," softly.

Mikey said, "I love you, Gee."

Gerard blinked at him, his eyes wide. "That's, um--"

"The first time I've said it since I got out." Mikey nodded. "Yeah, sorry, I meant--"

"No, no, no. No sorries. No. I love you, too. I do."

"I know Gee."

"Okay, okay," Gerard said and then seemed to collapse under his own relief, falling asleep in minutes. Mikey reached out and rested his fingers over one of the knees Gerard had curled against his chest. His hand was still there when the dawn woke him up.


End file.
